Keith Stern

If youve never heard that televangelist Jim Bakker worshipped steam room romps with male staffers or that Peter Pan author James M. Barrie displayed an inordinate interest in lost boys, Keith Stern has news for you. His Queers in History (Benbella, $19.95) began life back in 1993 as a CD-ROM; and the kicky encyclopedia recognizes that much of what gets tossed off as gossip is not only documented fact, but important proof of an LGBT past. Tonights signing and Q&A will follows a 30-minute show in which Stern reads a gay poem by Abraham Lincoln; impersonates Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, a Prussian who in 1779 wrote the U.S. Armys standard training manual with his teen lover; and tweaks the marriage debate (A lot of married people have been gay, Stern notes. Oscar Wilde was married and had kids.) And Stern has Middle Earth as moral support: Andy Serkis, Gollum in The Lord of the Rings films, directed Sterns original, full-length show. And Gandalfwe mean Sir Ian McKellenprovides an eloquent forward to his book, reminding us that such compendiums strengthen a community too long abandoned by history and plagued with injustice. STEVE WIECKING